


this godforsaken mess (that you made me)

by epigraphs



Category: The Good Wife (TV)
Genre: F/M, georgetown through the ashbaugh weekend, he has a lot of feelings, mainly about alicia, their relationship from will's point of view
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:02:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26272312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epigraphs/pseuds/epigraphs
Summary: Will Gardner is nothing if not a selfish bastard, and he wants this, has wanted it for eighteen years, since cannonballs and Criminal Law 101, since all-nighters in the library and Friday night beers. He’s wanted Alicia for longer than he’s wanted anything else in his whole life.
Relationships: Alicia Florrick/Will Gardner
Comments: 12
Kudos: 29





	this godforsaken mess (that you made me)

**Author's Note:**

> I can only blame quarantine for getting me to start this show, and Josh Charles’ face for making me sob when Will Gardner got shot in a courtroom. This is a little bit of payback for both, I suppose. This fic is Will’s POV, from Georgetown through the weekend in New York during the Ashbaugh case. 
> 
> Title is from “illicit affairs” by Taylor Swift, because duh. All the dialogue you recognize belongs to the Kings. I’m nervous and excited to be dipping my toes into this fandom and these two, so please be gentle. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> [This fic is also on ffn, where I'm teammccord.](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13688514/1/this-godforsaken-mess-that-you-made-me)

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the truth of the matter is this: William Paul Gardner is a selfish bastard. He will admit to this fact, under oath, freely and without hesitation.

There’s no way he graduates top of his class in law school (well, second, but there’s always room for embellishment among the truth of it all), makes a name for himself by thirty, becomes a managing partner just a few years later, builds up a reputation as a veritable shark and notches on his bedpost to rival Casanova himself, without being at least a little bit of a selfish bastard. 

Such things come at a cost.

The thing is, he’s not thinking of cost, much less cause and effect, when he’s at a midnight pool party during 1L orientation, beer in hand. He’s not thinking of much at all when he sees her from across the yard, perched on a deck chair in a sundress, except about the way her hair curls and that her pale skin is freckled and that he’s overtaken with the sudden, un-ignorable urge to know her name. 

Now, any lawyer worth their rate would caution an approach, weigh pros and cons and potential damages, but Will, well Will is pleasantly buzzed on two-and-a-half Coronas and really doesn’t give a damn. Besides, he won’t be a real lawyer for a few years anyway. 

So he takes five strides across the pool deck, ignores two blondes and a brunette, and finally settles down on the Adirondack next to her. “Hey,” he says, suave, practised. He does this all the time. 

The girl looks up and raises an eyebrow. “Hey,” she says, cautious. She’s rubbed the label off her beer bottle with her thumb. 

“No swimming for you?” he asks, gestures to his swim trunks, the droplets of water drying on his skin. 

“With the cannonballs you’ve been doing, how could I compete?”

He throws his head back and laughs. “Mind if I keep you company for a bit? I’m Will.”

Someone should really perform an experiment on law students, Will thinks in November of 1L. Especially stressed ones. Calculate hours of sleep and calories consumed in relation to exams and case analyses. He’s pretty sure there might be something there.

When he mentions it to Alicia, who’s splayed across his futon, a mess of curls and case notes and textbooks, she just laughs. “Considering a career change, Gardner? You tired of me getting better grades?”

Will barks a laugh. She’s not wrong, but he won’t let her down that easy. “Never, Cavanaugh.”

The friendship they’ve fallen into is the easiest thing, nurtured by long hours in the library, studying on his sofa and hers, coffee breaks at the diner near campus, beers after long weeks of lectures and case reviews. 

It’s the most constant thing in his life right now, Will thinks, and somehow the thought doesn’t scare him shitless. (It should.) His girlfriend (is she really still that?) is in Indiana, his father is dead, his pitching game is over (intramural doesn’t count). 

But then there’s Alicia.

Alicia is in his Crim lecture at eight on Mondays and Wednesdays, seat 35L, sharing a table in the stacks on Tuesdays, trying not to laugh as he makes silly faces to distract them from the constant pressure, the endless reading, the expectations. 

She’s at his place on Thursdays, in a crewneck and jeans, feet tucked under her as she sits on his futon and quizzes him on holdings and facts, and he watches as an errant curl falls in her face and she tucks it behind her ear without missing a beat. 

She’s next to him in a crappy bar in Chinatown on Fridays, drinking beers because they’re cheap, even though he knows she’d rather be having a glass of Merlot.

She comes to his games on the weekends, pretends to know what she’s cheering for, but she’s got a textbook open in her lap the entire time, and it makes him smile every time he catches a glimpse. 

Alicia is everywhere, and it’s the easiest thing, and it’s safe and it’s comfortable and he doesn’t want it to change, ever, because he’s a selfish bastard and it scares him shitless to think what could happen if they kissed.

Because here’s the thing. Will Gardner wants to kiss her. Has wanted to kiss Alicia Cavanaugh square on the lips since the day he set eyes on her, and every damn day since, but he doesn’t let himself, because he doesn’t know what will happen if he does and he’s too fucking scared to find out. 

Relationships, Will decided a long time ago, are messy and hard and all-too-complicated and _this,_ this weird equilibrium he’s found with Alicia, isn’t, so he protects it, at all costs.

It means that when she stands up from his futon to get some water from his kitchen, and her hand brushes his shoulder and he feels an electric shock all the way down his spine, he doesn’t grab her hand and pull her down and press his mouth to hers. 

Instead, he makes a show of highlighting something in his textbook — he has no idea what — and says, “Hey, could you grab me a glass too?” and Alicia nods, and she smiles, and he forces his brain to stop thinking about her lips.

It happens once, in law school. Of course it does. 

They were never going to get through two years of closer-than-normal friendship, of falling asleep in each other’s apartments, of sharing the same space for what feels like seventy percent of each week, without it happening at least once.

It’s the end of 2L spring finals and they’re at a bar with what’s easily half of their class, all weary and slap-happy and about to head off for internships — the ones that really matter. She’s headed to Chicago and he's going to New York and they’ll be real lawyers in a year and the thought of it is heady and unnerving.

Will feels something flick his ear and he jumps, snaps out of it. Sure enough, Alicia is trying to hold back laughter, clutching her beer bottle with one hand and covering her mouth with the other. It doesn’t work, and she’s doubling over at the sight of him, her laugh deep and low and full. 

It dislodges something deep in the recesses of his chest. 

What he means to do is shove her in retaliation, friendly, laugh and try to tickle her ribs. Innocent. 

What really happens is that he accidentally catches her cheek with his thumb, brushes across it, gentle, slow. Time stops and they finally look at each other. _Oh._

Repression is a funny thing. Compartmentalization too. Will’s gotten really damn good at both. At ignoring half the truth in favour of his own made-up reality. It’ll serve him well in court. 

Not so much here, on a Saturday night, when Alicia’s eyes are the colour of chocolate and her curls are a dark halo around her head. She smells like cherries and wine; he wants to know if she tastes like it too. 

“Will,” she says, and he almost doesn’t hear it over the sound of the bar. Her voice cracks a little. He gulps. She takes a breath, wraps his free hand in her own and squeezes. “Do you wanna get out of here?” 

They end up at her apartment, because it’s closer and cleaner and her roommate flew home to LA the day before. She’s shaking like a leaf as she unlocks the door and he places a hand on the small of her back, means for it to be comforting. He can feel her shiver.

When they make it inside, they pause for a minute, chests heaving. 

This is the last moment when one of them could bow out, when he could walk out the door and this could just be an awkward thing that happened once, when it could mean nothing. He considers it, for just a second, thinks about the fact that he doesn’t know if she’s really prepared to deal with him and all his baggage. 

Then he decides he wants her too much to really care. Their first kiss is slower than he expects, syrupy sweet and careful. She tastes like beer and limes, and he holds her face in his hands like he’s afraid it’ll crumble. 

She’s the one to spur them on, fisting her hands in the bottom of his shirt and dragging it up his torso. Alicia steps closer and deepens the kiss, licks into his mouth and makes him shudder. 

“Leesh,” he practically growls, pushing down the straps of her top. He makes his way down her neck to her collarbones, desperate to kiss every inch of exposed skin. Will has always been good at memorizing, recalling facts, tiny scraps of information. He thinks Alicia’s body will be his favourite thing to learn. 

They stumble to her bedroom in the half-dark, and she finally manages to flip a switch and turn on the lamp on her nightstand.

She’s bathed in yellow light and she’s radiant, hair mussed, lips raspberry red, top riding up her belly, exposing a sliver of skin. His mouth goes dry at the sight of her. 

“God, you’re beautiful,” he says, stepping closer, capturing her lips again. He swallows her protest, pulls her flush and loses himself in her. 

Will knows there are clichéd things to be said about sex and love and when one becomes the other. He doesn’t really want to think about that now though, with Alicia under him, over him, everywhere. 

Instead, he trails kisses down her sternum and maps the freckles on her skin, like a good cartographer charting unexplored territory. He catalogues her sounds, breathy moans and gasps and sighs, his own personal symphony. He learns that the most beautiful sight in the world is when she comes apart and finally lets herself go. 

After, when they’re lying under her covers in the moonlight, unbothered by the open blinds and the streetlight filtering in, Will traces mindless patterns on her hipbone. 

“That was—” Alicia starts, and stops herself to let out a laugh. 

Will smiles. “Yeah.” 

He feels a sudden urge to turn on his side, to cup her cheek again and look deep in her eyes, and tell her he’s in love with her, that he’s wanted this since the first time he set eyes on her, that he’s gunning for forever. 

Instead, Alicia’s stomach growls and she blushes and he chuckles and they pick themselves up and head to her kitchen, Will in his boxers, Alicia in his shirt.

From somewhere in the depths of her cabinet, he produces a box of pancake mix, and she perches herself on a stool, letting him take over. Breakfast is Alicia’s favourite meal; she told him once that if she could only eat pancakes and eggs forever, she might. 

Will considers telling her, one more time, while he’s flipping a pancake at her stove, but he decides against it. They have time, after this summer, and selfishly, he doesn’t know if he wants to tell her yet, or let the feeling settle deeper into his chest.

Will comes back to campus in the fall, officially single. He and Alicia didn’t get the chance to talk much after that night in the spring, both caught up in the rush of packing and catching flights. 

He’s waiting for her on the library steps, the early-fall sunlight warm on his shoulders. Will can’t wait to see her again, to wrap her in a hug and finally get the chance to tell her how he really feels — scratch that — how he _has_ felt for the past two years. 

He spots her out of the corner of his eye and he feels himself break out in a grin, and he doesn’t give a damn that it’s corny as hell. He waves and Alicia spots him too and the hug she gives him is like coming home. She smells like cherries and summer and he breathes her in. 

They catch up as they walk toward an ice cream place on the street corner, laughing and talking and it’s still the easiest thing, he thinks, to be next to her. Three months and nothing’s changed. It makes him feel brave. 

“I finally ended it with Helena,” he says, out of the blue, and it stops her in her tracks. They’d been on a break anyway, after spring break. It was only a matter of time. Will hears the blood roaring in his head. 

“Why?” she asks, genuinely concerned, and he wants to yell, “Because I love you, damn it!” at the top of his lungs with a boombox on his shoulder, dramatic, like in a crappy movie. He doesn’t, because this is reality, so he says something about long-distance instead and how difficult it’s become. 

“Well, that fills me with confidence.” Alicia twists a curl around her index finger and thumb, bites her lip, worried. 

“Why? Leesh, what’s going on?” 

Will has never been one for premonition, but he feels it today, because he just knows, somehow, that she’s going to tell him she met someone. Fuck. 

Peter Florrick, he finds out later, was a junior associate at Crozier, Abrams & Abbot. He graduated from UChicago, and is about to clerk on the 7th Circuit. 

Will should be impressed; instead, he feels vaguely sick.

He remembers back in 1L, when she told him office romances were too cliched, just messy distractions. 

Clearly, people change.

Peter comes to visit over Thanksgiving break, when Will and Alicia and everyone else is deep in cases and legal briefs, tired and running on empty. She skips out on one of their Thursday night study sessions to see Peter for drinks and Will pretends that it isn’t a big deal.

He’s sitting on the grass with a friend, throwing a baseball in the air, when he gets a nudge. “Hey, who’s that with Cavanaugh?”

Will looks over at the bench in question, spots Alicia sitting next to a guy. He’s tall, with dark hair and a coat that’s expensive. He’s got one arm wrapped around her shoulder and is using the other to speak. 

Alicia is watching him, canting her face upwards to catch his gaze.

Will thinks he’s never seen her look so small.

The more Peter visits, the less Will sees of Alicia, the less he seeks her out. It feels like he’s intruding somehow, on this new life she’s building for herself. Seeing her in Peter’s arms does something to his gut, a cold, nauseated feeling, like his system is working overtime to process what it’s seeing.

They never talk about that one night in the spring; it’s like it didn’t happen. Selfishly, he’s glad.

In May, he has a job lined up in Baltimore and she’s got the return offer for Chicago and they’re about to be real adults. Attorneys at law. 

She’s top of their class, and he’s right behind her and a year ago, it would’ve ended with her lording it over him for weeks, throwing her head back in laughter as he pretended to pout. (He’s always known she’s smarter than him; he still thinks he might make the better lawyer.)

Now, they acknowledge it only on the day of graduation, a fleeting moment in the blur of it all. Honours recognition for both of them. It paid off. 

“Cavanaugh,” he says, as they’re in line for something (he has no real idea what), “you beat me after all.” He’s got a glint in his eye, a smirk on his face. He’s trying to make this normal, because it was, once upon a time. 

She laughs, and he feels it deep in his bones. “Did you ever doubt it?”

Will shakes his head. “Nah.”

He’ll miss this, having her near. Even though it’s been weird between them, he still likes knowing she’s a block away, that they’re sharing space. 

If law school is one long trial, Will thinks, today’s closing arguments. Everything on the line, one last shot at the defence. 

“So, Chicago...” Will starts, and immediately stops. Wants to punch himself just a little. He’s seen enough rom-coms (usually at the behest of a girl, or his sisters, or, in the absolute worst case, both) to know how this is supposed to go. The grand, last-ditch effort, the speech, the under-the-wire timing. 

But reality rarely matches up.

“Yeah.” Alicia smiles and presses a hand to her stomach. Will’s heart drops.

Fifteen years either pass in a lifetime or the blink of an eye — it’s all in the eye of the beholder. 

There’s Baltimore, and climbing the ranks. Betting, a little too much. A move to Chicago, meeting Diane. The start of what could be name recognition. Leaving opposing counsel in the dust. Building a reputation. 

“Will Gardner, he’s a real son of a bitch.”

“But he’ll win you any case.”

“And he doesn’t care about the consequences.”

Partnership, an Audi, an apartment in the Loop. 

One-night-stands, six-month flings, nothing permanent.

Diane, Stern, cutting loose, a chance. 

His name on the letterhead, a corner office on the twenty-eighth floor. 

He knows Alicia’s still in Chicago, that Peter’s an Assistant State’s Attorney with a reputation of his own. Will thinks he’ll probably run for something, one day, can smell the political ambition from a mile away. 

He’s seen Peter from across a room at dinners. Alicia’s sometimes at his side. She still looks small; her hair’s straight now, pinned back and picture-perfect. He wants to thread his fingers through it and make it come undone. 

Will plays a good game of avoidance, reverse cat-and-mouse in banquet halls and theatres. 

He doesn’t know what he’d say, if they met somewhere. He’s kept his heart under lock and key but he thinks she could break it all over again, easy as that. He’s too scared to risk it. 

It’s been fifteen years when Will watches her on the news, standing a half-step behind Peter, camera flashes going off in her face. Corruption, or so they say. Hookers, that they know. Will doesn’t care what part of it is true, he just wants to punch Peter Florrick in the face. 

Alicia’s eyes are wide in the corner of his screen, her mouth set in a narrow line. She’s in a herringbone coat; it’s shapeless and ages her ten years. Her hair is pulled back, slick and straight, and she looks like she’s wearing a costume. 

It’s the kind of outfit she would have made fun of, back when they sat in lecture halls, passing notes and whispering. She told him once, at quarter to midnight, halfway through revising a Torts lecture, that she never wanted to be one of those women. The ones who gave up their careers for a man, Stepford wives with pearl necklaces and event calendars. 

He wonders what’s changed. 

A few weeks later, he sticks his hand in an elevator door, a split-second instinct.

She’s all buttoned up in baby blue; he’s in runners and a thousand-dollar suit. It’s awkward, but not as much as it should be, and when he tells her to call, on a whim, it feels like the most _right_ thing he’s done in years. 

“Stern, Lockhart & Gardner,” he says, and he wonders if she remembers when they talked about wanting to start their own firms. A lifetime ago, when they were babies.

“Hey, you got top billing,” she says, and there’s something in her tone that makes him feel twenty-three again, like she’s ribbing him and proud at the very same time. 

He shrugs, and then, because he can’t help himself: “I’m an impressive person.”

He half-expects her to tell him to _check your ego,_ _Gardner,_ like she used to on the daily. Instead, she’s sincere and it means more to hear it from her than he’ll ever admit. 

Will doesn’t actually expect her to call; when his assistant tells him Alicia Florrick wants a meeting, it takes all his willpower not to grin. 

Florrick, all hard consonants and edges. It’s too stern for her, he thinks. 

She’s in his office in a grey dress and pearls, and he wonders when they became these people, with money to spare. He misses who they were in flannels and faded jeans.

When he offers her a job, he doesn’t think twice about it. Diane will be furious, there’s no question, and they’ve got other candidates in spades, but he can’t pass up the chance to have her in his life again. 

Opportunities like this don’t just _happen,_ and he’s not about to waste this one.

Alicia looks surprised, and backtracks, and he wonders when she got this insecure. She’s supposed to be the self-assured one, comfortable in her own skin. He hates that she was robbed of it. 

(Well, really, he hates Peter Florrick, who’s the worst type of selfish bastard. Can’t even see what’s in front of him, how he’s thrown away the best thing in his life. It makes Will seethe.)

Will gets off the phone with Patti Nyholm and he wants to punch the wall. Snow is falling outside his office, fat flakes that’ll melt on impact. The firm is deserted; it’s the middle of the night, and he’s the worst kind of gambler.

Compartmentalization works wonders in a courtroom, in depos, when he’s focused on the bottom line. But Will’s not really heartless, despite his quest to prove the contrary. He’s just damn good at pretending. 

There’s a kid’s life on the line and Will’s so damn tired, of the deals and the strategy and the awful reality that this is the world they live in, the life he chose. 

He tells Alicia, hands clasped together like he’s at confession.

“Will, you did everything,” she says, drops her bag and her coat and places a hand on his shoulder. Squeezes, comforting. “Will, you listen. I know you did everything.”

Her touch bleeds through the fabric of his dress shirt, like a burn. Will thinks of life, and second, third and fourth chances, of a kid’s fate hanging in the balance. Of him and Alicia, of moments he let slip away into the darkness. 

He doesn’t think about consequences as he looks at her left hand on his shoulder and the band on her ring finger, sparkling in the low light. He just needs to feel something, to remember he’s alive, and damn the repercussions. (He might not be a heartless bastard, but he sure as hell is a selfish one.)

Their eyes meet and he takes a second to remember, hazel framed by chocolate, a halo of curls. He gets up and cups her face with one hand, then the other, moving on instinct.

She tastes like he remembers, the headiest drug, and he savours the feeling. They break apart and her eyes are wide, pupils blown. “Are we…?” he starts, asking for something he doesn’t know how to name. 

Alicia leans in and cuts him off with another kiss, deeper this time, more heat. Both hands on his back, she pulls him flush and the contact shoots through him like a live wire. She’s got a hand on the back of his head, and her tongue is in his mouth and _this_ is what he’s been missing, for fifteen years, this — 

“Damn it.” She pulls away, flushed and panting. 

Fuck. “Alicia…”

She flees his office and he’s left rudderless, utterly overwhelmed. He stands there for a second, hands at his sides, like he doesn’t know what to do with them.

His whole body hums with adrenaline, and the outlet is gone. Damn it. Just, damn it.

Will kicks his leather chair with his right foot, winces at the impact. Runs a hand through his hair, mutters “fuck” under his breath and feels sorry for himself for a minute. The snow keeps falling outside; his drive home will be windshield wipers and avoiding black ice. 

He doesn’t know why he starts running down the stairs to the associates’ bullpen, except that he doesn’t want to let this moment slip away, like ice melting on salted concrete. 

When he’s just feet from her office, he’s breathless, and he sees the lights flick off. His heart hammers wildly in his chest. A woman looks up, and it’s…

Courtney. Of course it is.

(Later, when they’re taking lunch meetings in hotel rooms and planning evenings around her children’s schedules, she tells him that after she went back to his office that night, to find him, she slept with Peter for the first time in months. Will pulls her close and presses a kiss to the top of her head. 

There’s a part of Will that hopes she thought of him when she was using her husband to get off, that Peter Florrick had to feel expendable for once in his life, like a means to an end. The thought shoots straight to his groin, and if he were a better man, he’d probably hate himself for it just a little bit.)

He watches Courtney walk away, buttoning her coat as she gets to the elevators. It’s fucking freezing; he wonders sometimes what his life would be like if he’d moved to Miami, LA. 

Back in his office, he calls her, desperate, hears the line click on the third ring. 

Bad timing, like they’ve always had. Too many strings to unfurl. His phone rings again, seconds later. Will’s heart is in his throat. 

It’s Danny, the case. Outside, the snow turns into sleet.

“It’s romantic because it didn’t happen.” 

He wants to call bullshit on that, and on bad timing, on all of it, but he doesn’t, because he’s too scared of this fragile balance they’ve created between them. He doesn’t want to find out what happens when it breaks.

Alicia wins the competition. He says it’s just about the work, and it really is, when it comes down to it, but that doesn’t stop him from feeling like a weight has fallen off his chest when Diane agrees that she’s the one they should keep. 

Dinner in a week becomes pizza and beer five weeks later, two bottles of Heineken and pepperoni in her office. It’s like countless nights spent in crappy apartments, with peeling paint on the mouldings and floorboards that creaked. 

It feels like that all happened a hundred years ago. 

They bring up Georgetown, how could they not, but she’s cagey, pivots to Giada. He gets it, makes a joke to set her at ease. 

She asks what this is, this weird thing between them. He doesn’t have an answer, at least not one he thinks she’ll like.

“I like myself around you, Alicia,” he says eventually, and it’s true. Has been since he was twenty-three and bright-eyed, too cocky for his own good. “And I don’t like myself around a lot of people.”

They’re interrupted, again, by a call. Life, it seems, doesn’t want to cut them any slack. He watches as she answers, slips back into work-Alicia, calculated and sure. He thinks he’s not the only one who’s gotten good at putting on an act. 

She has to go follow up with Kalinda, and he gets it, he really does. It’s one-half work and one-half self-preservation. Alicia has never been one for mess, for complications, not then and not now. She’s probably had enough mess in the past year to last her a lifetime. 

Still, he can’t help himself: “We always have options, Alicia. I’m just saying.” 

Three taps on her door frame and a face that’s unreadable, and she’s gone. Great. 

Eight-thousand dollar wine in a corporate coffee mug is a strange form of liquid courage, but Will doesn’t care, just swallows and clears his throat. Gets up, buttons his suit, shakes out his shoulders. 

To hell with bad timing, to hell with life, with complications. She picks up and there’s background noise, chatter and microphone feedback; she’s at Peter’s press conference, of course she is. 

He’s putting his whole heart on the line and Alicia tells him she needs a plan. There’s the kids and the press and the husband and the scandal and he gets it, he really fucking does, but if he’s learned one thing in life, it’s that you can plan everything you want and it’ll never work out like you thought it would. 

Someone calls for her, and he groans, because she’s about to hang up and it really shouldn’t surprise him, that it’s going to end this way, again. Mixed messages and half-finished thoughts and just… bad fucking timing. They might be cursed. 

He resigns himself to it for a second, tells her answering machine as much, plays it safe. It’s easier, for both of them, to avoid the complications. 

But…fuck it. Will Gardner is nothing if not a selfish bastard, and he wants this, has wanted it for eighteen years, since cannonballs and Criminal Law 101, since all-nighters in the library and Friday night beers. He’s wanted Alicia for longer than he’s wanted anything else in his whole life. 

He leaves her two voicemails, and he doesn’t realize that she only ever gets one.

Miscommunication is a funny thing. Crossed wires, mixed signals, one conversation substituting for another. It’s easier, sometimes, to avoid what actually has to be addressed.

He lies about the voicemail, because it’s like he told Wade. Too complicated. He thinks if she ever really got to see the insides of his heart, spilling out like intestines on a coroner’s table, she’d turn away and run. 

So he keeps up the ruse, tells her it’s nothing, that she made the right choice. It’s safer that way, to preserve their equilibrium. 

He wants her in his life, her presence steady and sure. He’ll do whatever it takes not to risk losing it. (It’s selfish; he knows.)

Tequila shots chased down with limes, fancy suits and a piano in the background. It’s a far cry from DC dive bars with crappy vodka, too much denim and cover-band mixtapes, but it feels about the same. 

Easy. Carefree. Right. 

His throat runs dry as he watches her lick salt off her thumb. They joke and he makes her laugh, the real one, a deep honker that settles in his chest, spreads out like a warm embrace. It’s one of his favourite sounds in the whole world (right after the way she sighs when she comes). 

She asks about Tammy and he brushes it off. London is on the other side of the world, and besides, he was never allowed to fall in love with her anyway.

Suddenly, he’s dead serious. Fuck it all. “What if we were to suddenly have good timing, just for… an hour?” His eyes focus on the bottle of whiskey behind the bar; he tries to read the label. “What would that look like?” 

A pause. “I think that would look like an exceptional moment.” Alicia’s words are carefully chosen, slow, deliberate. Will holds his breath and lets himself hope.

Their hands meet on granite, a salt shaker between them. He traces her second knuckle with his thumb. 

They have a whole conversation at the check-in desk, eyes and eyebrows and sideways glances, and he loves the fact that he can still know what she’s thinking without saying a word. 

The trip to their room is a comedy of errors. Six million signs from the universe that this is a terrible idea, each one summarily ignored. When he kisses her on the elevator, with teeth and tongue and all he’s got, it feels like coming home. 

Will takes a split second to breathe before he follows her into the suite, lets it sink in that he’s about to have sex with (no, fuck… no, _make love to,_ as clichéd as it sounds) Alicia Cavanaugh (not Florrick, not right now) for the first time in a decade and a half. 

She has him pinned against a wall the moment he walks in, no time to take in the suite itself. Will doesn’t have it in him to care. Not when Alicia’s fisting her hands under his suit jacket, pressed up against the length of him, kissing him like there’s no tomorrow. 

He’s right there with her, desperate and feverish, but they’ve got time. For the first time in their lives, they have time, set aside for just this. He wants to savour every second. 

It takes Herculean effort to push her back, as gently as he can. Will takes her in: eyes blown wide, hair a mess, suit jacket askew. She’s the most stunningly beautiful thing he’s ever seen. 

“Hey, hey,” he says, quiet, reverent. “We don’t have to rush this.” 

He tips her chin up with his thumb; she smiles, sheepish, like she can’t believe this is happening. He can’t either. One more kiss and he takes her hand, leads them into the suite, all crystal and brocade, five rooms and a four-poster. There’s champagne in an ice bucket, chilled.

“Holy shit,” she says, turning in a circle so she can see everything, and he can’t hold back the laughter. Alicia swearing is rare; it brings a smile to his face every time she does it. 

She rolls her eyes and jabs him in the ribs. He catches her hand and pulls her close, lips crashing together again, slower, but with just as much heat. 

Their clothes mark a trail on the way to the bed — shoes, stilettos, jacket, tie, dress shirt, jacket, slacks. He pulls down the zipper of her dress inch by inch, revealing her slip, and it’s the best kind of anticipation, layer upon layer to peel back. 

She gasps as he stands up again, his chest to her back. She smells like something expensive that he doesn’t know the name for, but there’s an undertone of cherries and it makes his heart skip a beat. 

Will moves her hair to one side of her neck, exposing the other so he can lean in and catch the shell of her ear between his teeth, tugging. He leaves goosebumps in his wake and she shudders. “I’ve wanted to do this for forever,” he whispers in her ear, and he thinks it’s her undoing. 

Alicia turns around faster than he can blink. Her eyes are onyx, and she looks almost hungry. He doesn’t think he’s ever been this turned on, this on edge, in his whole life. 

Will’s back hits the sheets with a thud, and suddenly, Alicia is over him, her hair a corona around her face. She dips down to kiss him, long and slow, and traces the planes of his abdomen, scratching lightly. Will’s hips lift off the bed, involuntary, and Alicia groans.

When they did this in law school, a lifetime ago, young and bright-eyed, they wouldn’t have recognized the people they’ve become now. He doesn’t know if the thought scares him, if it should.

“Will,” Alicia says from somewhere above him, smoothing out a wrinkle on his forehead. 

“Yeah?” 

There’s a flicker of embarrassment on her face and he feels his heart drop in his chest. Oh god. “It’s nothing,” she says, sheepish, “I just… we’re not twenty-four anymore.” 

“I’m aware,” he says, deadpan. 

She rolls her eyes. The knot in his chest loosens. “No, I mean… I don’t _look_ twenty-four anymore.” She shrugs a shoulder as best she can, leaning over him with hands on either side of his head. 

Will’s eyes drift to her chest, to pale skin and black lace. Alicia flushes red and closes her eyes. Fuck. He wants to kick himself. 

He reaches a hand up to her face, calloused thumb smooth across her cheekbone. “Leesh,” he says, coaxing. She opens her eyes; they’re hooded and dark as night. “You are gorgeous,” he says, “and you’re all I want, okay?” 

( _Forever,_ his heart screams. _You’re all I’ve ever wanted and I’m hopelessly in love with you._ He shuts it down, fast.) 

She nods, dips down to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Okay,” she whispers in his ear. “Okay.”

When she comes, it’s even more beautiful than he remembers.

An hour turns into a night, turns into lunch meetings and evenings when the kids are with Peter, stolen moments in parking garages and elevators. 

Every time he kisses her, he swallows down the three words bubbling up in his throat. He wants to shout them from the rooftops, but he can’t. He knows they’ll make her run. 

They’re the truth, though. It’s one of the most basic facts about Will Gardner — that he’s in love with Alicia Florrick, has been ever since he set eyes on her at Georgetown. It’s an undeniable truth about him, like his love for the Orioles, and that he can vivisect his opposing counsel with the utmost precision. 

But the truth is a slippery thing, and he knows that even better. 

Because, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the truth is sometimes inconvenient, as the defence will seek to argue in every trial. It can… complicate things. 

And Will’s life is complicated enough as it is. He doesn’t want to threaten the thing they have, delicate and precious. It’s easier to let his actions speak for him — the way he holds her head when he kisses her, finds the spots that make her knees buckle, cooks for her (or tries) on the nights she sneaks over to his. 

He thinks she does the same, when she smooths out the stubborn line in his forehead, when she tugs on his earlobe with her teeth, when she lets him take her out to dinner, somewhere in the suburbs, where no one knows their names.

So, when they’re wrapped up in each other on a balcony in the New York City twilight, city lights flickering around them, and she whispers, “This is the happiest I’ve ever been,” in his ear, like a secret, he believes her. Because William Paul Gardner is nothing if not a selfish bastard.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [Twitter](https://www.twitter.com/_bucketofrice) and [Tumblr](https://www.goodthingscomeinthrees.tumblr.com), come say hi!


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